That Butterfly's Toast
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: Katsuki is right about all sorts of things. But not everything. {For BakuDeku positivity week 2018 - Day 1 (16/09) - Genesis - Comfort - Space}


**Notes:** Day 1 (16/09) - Genesis - Comfort - Space

P.S. I don't think I can manage something for every day of the week. I'll see how it goes. Free free to yell at me, if I'm doing it wrong.

I just sometimes like the challenge of filling out prompts I can find.

* * *

He is three, small enough to see the pattern of flames emblazoned across a butterfly's wing and think 'wow, that's so big,' as he lays his hand across the jar it's imprisoned inside. He wonders at how it does not burn, and if a butterfly can have a quirk, all as it flaps its wings and spreads a powdered smudge of brown against the glass.

'It's dying,' pronounces Kacchan at the sight, with a firmness to his tone that makes Izuku want to bristle at it a little, but still. He doesn't. Kacchan is often right about these things, after all.

'Can we give it something?' he asks shyly instead, mind filled with mocchi and other sweet things, like, oh! Tamago kake gohan! Yes! Because the yellow of an egg is bright and sunny, like the centre of a flower and it's pollen! But Kacchan's face, when he outlines this thought, is anything but impressed **.**

'You're really stupid, huh, Izuku?' he mutters, though with the tone of voice he's using, it doesn't really sound like a question at all. 'A butterfly can't eat an _egg_. It doesn't have any _teeth._ '

Izuku wilts a bit. 'I…maybe it can suck out the yolk?' he asks hopefully, though the dejection he feels, at the sneer on Kacchan's face, wavers and rises in him, like a tide. ''Specially if we don't cook it…'

'Where you gonna get the egg from?' Kacchan asks him point-blank. 'You gonna steal it from your Mom's kitchen?'

Izuku's eyes widen, his hand running up to shake in front of his mouth in shock. 'K-kacchan! No! That's what a villain would do!' Then he wilts into himself a little more and gives the glass, and the weakly flapping butterfly inside a forlorn glance. 'Well, i-if it's to help the butterfly though…'

Kacchan sighs, and with one firm motion, pulls out the cork rammed into the top of the jar. He tilts it onto it's side firmly, patting the base a few times to encourage the butterfly to sluggishly heave its way back into the outside world. It half-falls, half-flutters into the grip of gravity as a result, catching itself on a blade of grass, and hanging there upside down, as its antennae waves weakly.

'You can't help a lost cause,' Kacchan, says, not a flicker of positive emotion on his face, not even the hint of a sadistic sneer that Izuku has sometimes worriedly watched slide onto his face, all when he watches some of the other neighbourhood children walk by, the ones with the 'useless quirks.'

Izuku watches. Bites his lip. But no token protest of 'Kacchan, stop it, that's mean,' will rise to his tongue, will rip through the air and makes Kacchan's face freeze, before it splits apart into a terrifying smile. No, that occurrence is still weeks away.

But once it starts, it will not stop.

'Kacchan, stop,' he will echo again and again, throughout the years. Sometimes under his breath, or within his mind, and each time, none the less, Kacchan will fire at him a fierce glare as though he's heard, all the same.

'Deku,' he will spit and snarl in return, with a vengeance, for an invisible slight Izuku will not understand until years later. 'Stop looking at me like that! What gives someone like _you_ , the right to judge me.'

Nothing, perhaps. Except the persistent little itch in Izuku that says no, Kacchan is going to be an amazing hero and he's better than petty brawls and harshly spat 'Deku's' even if each syllable whispers _'lost cause, lost cause,'_ at him, Izuku, each time it stings his ears.

Well too bad. Because Izuku's not about to flap off somewhere quietly to die.

* * *

'You can't help,' Kacchan tells him quietly, years later. 'Don't be an idiot.'

Izuku stares at him, no longer three or even fourteen, seeing the grit painted against the black flare of Kacchan's mask like the brown dust from a long dead butterfly's wing. Around and beneath them both, such dust rolls and sways, the last frantic swirl of force from a collapsed building their boots now rest on.

Stuck, torn even, Izuku's arms rest round someone bigger than him, their clothes tattered as the bend of an iron pipe hooks through their insides like a gutted fish. Izuku stares at the splatter of blood, at the way it puddles and laps at his boots, spreading and swirling into cracks and fissures, even creeping up to press a stray strain into the lining of his fallen glove.

Then Kacchan's hand is on his, fingers loosely perched over the spreading stain of red.

'Deku,' he says, low and heavy. 'Snap out of it, before I have to beat you back into the real world.'

Izuku breathes, put back into the world between them. His mind is hollow, empty, carved into a void. He doesn't dare put any words into it, not even a stray 'Kacchan.' It's funny really. There has always been space between them, even when they were little, Izuku always racing to catch up. But for once, he can't wish Kacchan away fast enough.

He swallows. Licks his lips. 'I,' he manages. 'I…'

'Am going to be loud and annoying and save any other people out here who need it,' Kacchan bites out, a simmering heat in his eyes. 'You're always yammering on about it, so you better put some action behind those words, _hero_. Or I'll beat you to it.'

Izuku lets his hands loosen. Gently places the 'lost cause' in his arms down on the ground.

'I'm sorry,' he tells them softly, picturing the faces this person has left behind, and the horrible yawning space their absence will create in the lives they belong to.

Kacchan squeezes his fingers tightly, enough to almost crush the bones inside. And then he tears off, without so much as a glance behind.

Izuku stifles a sigh. Kacchan is often right about these sorts of things, after all.

* * *

Izuku sits on the dryer days later, wrapped in green sheets, the spill of detergent on his hands. The washing machine door remains open, Kacchan's knee slamming into the curved mound of its glass as he shoves himself as Izuku, teeth hard and heavy against Izuku lip. The dryer rumbles beneath them and Izuku has time to memorise the feel of Kacchan's nose pushing into his cheek and the turn of his head as he moves, has time to picture the flare of orange briefs he's seen Kacchan shove into the dryer minutes ago, and fights down a chuckle. It emerges as a puff of breath into the open furnace of Kacchan's panting mouth all the same, and as punishment he is swiftly bitten. The yelp he brings to the table causes Kacchan to lean in harder, more viciously and Izuku's hands tangle between them, between the spill of his laundry littering his body and Kacchan's chest as he shoves one of his old socks against Kacchan's nose.

The second punishment is swift and exacting as Kacchan turns to sink his teeth into his hand; but gently, not quite enough to puncture and draw blood. They're not fighting right now, after all, not exactly.

There's a squeak, and Izuku freezes.

Then grimly, Kacchan's head rises from the faint bite-marks he leaves behind, the ring tattooed into Izuku's skin, before he levels a look at the floating laundry basket that has appeared in the doorway.

'Go find your own space,' he tells Hagakure rudely. Then turns back to resettle into more of Izuku's.

Hagakure makes a rude little pouting sound, kind of like a wet raspberry. 'Boys are so…' she trails off cutely, before turning and flouncing out of the room. Or at least Izuku thinks she flounces, it's hard to tell with the erratic bouncing of the laundry basket as it travels through the air.

'Why's she doing her laundry naked,' he finds himself asking, feeling oddly comforted by the snort he receives as a reply.

'She's a pervert, ignore her,' Kacchan mutters. 'My body's the only one you should be concerned with right now.'

Izuku stares down at the spikes of hair beneath his chin, wondering how it started, at the odd numbness inside him that refuses to let him squeal and make a fuss at being discovered by one of their classmates down here, doing…this sort of thing with Kacchan of all people.

Kacchan's palm passes over his skin, dipping below his shoulder blade and Izuku shudders at the orange heat it leaves behind, the brief spike of it as rapid as his heartbeat.

Kacchan grins, slow and nasty, and drags it back again to the same spot.

'Like that?' he asks. 'You really are a lost cause, Deku. So easy. For me, anyway.'

Izuku swallows and fights the urge to nod. He thinks if he were to die, he'd like to do it like this, loudly, against and with Kacchan. It likes it like this, them together, like they were towards the beginning of their lives. He hopes Kacchan likes it too.

'I'm sure I'll find a way to make it harder tomorrow,' he promises, and welcomes the flash of white he sees in the dark, in return, as Kacchan grins at him, wild and bright.

'Don't you dare. I'll kill you,' Kacchan promises and this time, Izuku allows himself the luxury of a nod. Because he is seventeen, old enough to see the heat in Kacchan's eyes and think 'wow, this is so much bigger than both of us,' as he lays his hand across the patch of skin that travels over the racing beat of Kacchan's trapped and quivering heart. He wonders how it does not tire, and if he can keep it beating, all as Kacchan growls at him and kisses hard enough to leave a freshly flowering bruise against his lips.

Either way, Izuku is quietly determined not to allow either one of them to quietly flap off to die.

Izuku tends to be right about _these_ sorts of things, after all, you see.


End file.
